Fulham accepted a third bid of £43m from the Saudi giants on Thursday, with the Serbian striker absent from his club’s 3-0 home loss to Brentford on Saturday.
Silva said “He forced everything to leave the club, he wanted to leave the club”
“We kept him at our football club but at the end they reached an agreement and now for us we keep playing without him”
Silva started new signing Raul Jimenez upfront against Brentford, but the Mexican has been a shadow of the goal scorer he was since fracturing his skull in 2021.
The West London club had rejected two bids of £25.5m and £30m for Mitrovic and were intent on keeping the 27 year old, who had scored 111 goals in 205 games for the club.
However, the volatile maverick made it clear his desire to leave the club, refusing to not train during their US pre-season tour and vowing not to play for the team again after his exit was blocked.
The number nine was integral to Fulham’s impressive return to the Premier League last season, where they finished 10th, scoring 14 goals in the league.
Instead, they are now forced to pursue a new striker with just 12 days left in the summer transfer window.
They have been linked with promising PSG starlet Hugo Ekitike, who is valued at around £34m and could hijack Everton’s pursuit of Southampton striker Che Adams in a £15m deal.
The Premier League club face a tough away trip at Arsenal next weekend, and will hope to resolve their striker crisis before that game.
New Al Hilal frontman, Mitrovic, will join Neymar, Ruben Neves and Milinkovic-Savic in Jiyhad ahead of their next game against Al-Raed
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